95 comments:

one hopes this operation will deplete the supplies of virgins available for martyrs.

As an old soldier, I continue to be amazed by the newest generation of soldiers. These troopers carry more on their backs than I ever did (or could) and they do it under conditions that I cannot comprehend. They carry equipment that would have been unheard of in my day. They are something else and have my total respect and admiration.

"Chickenhawk" comments are fundamentally ignorant. The whole point of democracy is to take power away from the warriors. This means that it's always civilians sending them to battle. That's the way it should be, and people volunteer for the armed forces in part to keep it that way.

"Hoosier Daddy said... As an old soldier, I continue to be amazed by the newest generation of soldiers. These troopers carry more on their backs than I ever did (or could)Well remember Roger, those M16s weigh a lot less than that monster 1861 Springfield you carried back then ;-)/ducks----7/2/09 8:53 AM Roger J. said... Hoosier, Ahem--it was an M14 thank you. and you better duck!-----7/2/09 8:55 AM Hoosier Daddy said... :-O/runs off in a zig zag motion"

Except, of course, Bush would not have avoided calling it what it is - a surge.

Your not serious. The "Surge" tm was a marketing phrase to keep the armchair generals at home happy. If Bush spent less time touting "Mission Accomplished", "Surge's", "War on Terror/Islamo-Facism" and more time actually planning maybe his history would be replete with more success. Leave the naming rights stuff to the press.

“A U.S. soldier missing since June 30 from his assigned unit is now believed to have been captured by militant forces...."

Thank God for the Geneva Conventions!

Of course, when he's beheaded, we'll be told that it was because of a Koran being flushed down the toilet at GITMO (must have been a really small copy). And plenty of semi-literates will actually believe it.

The Marines know how to die. But I get a bad feeling about them taking on this battle in the Afghan mountains where Bush was smart enough to avoid a useless fight that the Al Queada guys have always wanted to fight in their own briarpatch. It reminds you of Peleliu.

save_the_rustbelt said... Our troops are marvelous. But...Are we following the British and Soviets into the same dead end?

Pretty much.

The Left has made a big deal about how we "should be in Afghanistan" so we can do what they insist is our #1 National security objective - capture bin Laden and give him ACLU lawyers. (Next to Dems getting the EuroLeft to love us again, of course). They have demanded "all our effort" be in a primitive barbarous land of no strategic value, instead of "wasting our nation in Iraq" - for years. So we can get one of 1,000 violent Islamist leaders scattered from London to Indonesia in 60 separate terrorist groups.

Now that they have power, they are stuck with their demand that Afghanistan get all the war effort.

Almost 8 years later, the initial "liberation" the neocons celebrated has been reversed and control is shared between the Taliban, now back...Islamist warlords, and Karzai's squalid little narcokleptic puppet regime. A regime kept alive only by billions tossed into a money pit of now very rich opium smuggling, monthly packet of 100 dollar bill demanding "Freedom Lovers".

And we know that Laura Bush having the Karzais in for multiple White House state dinners, and exhulting about "women throwing away their Burquas for college books" and men and boys flying kites again when not working great jobs, was just ignorant typical 1st Lady prattle.

The Brits had a pretty good strategy for the Pashtuns. They cut their losses and told all adjacent tribes and ethnic groups, and Iran, that dealing with the barbarians was again - their "cross to bear".

Or at least appearing pretty much every minute (in one form or another) on television. The "surge" was just a buzzword to placate "armchair generals?" So too then is "stimulus" just a buzzword to placate armchair economists. The significant difference of course is that the surge actually worked. Another difference is that the surge was declared a failure (and Petraeus a liar) before it even had a chance to show any results. The stimulus has already been shown to have failed (how are those unemployment predictions looking these days, stimulus lovers?).

Barack Obama has said ever since 2002 that Iraq was a mistake and that we have to finish the job in Afghanistan. During last year's campaign he pledged to get Americans out of Iraq and double down to finish the job in Afghanistan.

And within the past week we've seen significant progress towards both of those.

And, Crimso, the stimulus is looking pretty good right now (to allay your concerns.) Only a moron would think the Great Recession would be over in a few weeks (maybe the same kind of morons who thought back in 2003 that the Iraq war would be over in six weeks.)

Drill--lots of memories there--I thought the old grease gun was a great weapon--originally made by continental can company IIRC--except the damn magazine held so many 45 slugs, it weighed a ton.

My memories of the Grease Gun was that it had the range and ballistic characteristics of a garden hose.

The nice thing about the 45 in a shoulder holster was that you ut it on once and forgot it. Not tat crap bout taking web harness and attached pistol on an offevery time you dismounted.

Remember those 2 old but true statements

1. You never need a pistol, till you REALLY need a pistol2. Never shoot anybody with a pistol that doesn't start with a 4

for the rest of you, the nice thing about a 45, whe you hit somebody with a 45, they go down and stay down. Tha's why the USA Army went to the 45 in 1911. Their experience fighting Muslim Terrorists (Moros), taught them that you could shoot a Moro with the standard 38 and they jst kept coming with that Machete

Well, by my count it's been 2,851 days since September 11, and Obama has been President for 163 of those days. So at best it's 5.7% Obama's fault and 94.3% Bush's fault that we haven't gotten him yet (and that's being generous to Bush because any cop will tell you that the colder the trail grows the longer your odds get.)

Just one more price of our six year detour into Iraq that let bin Laden and the Taliban regroup and re-emerge in Afghanistan (and spread their tentacles into and through Pakistan for good measure.)

I do question though whether controlling the opium producing area will really do much to interrupt funding.

Our experience with narco-terrorists in Latin America is that as long as there are corrupt local officials who they can bribe, intimidate or recruit, the cartels will always get their share of the cash no matter how much military pressure you put on them.

Only a moron would think the Great Recession would be over in a few weeks

Only a moron would think that a Great Recession cause in large part by unrestrained government and consumer spending and mounting debt could be cured by yet even more unconstrained government and consumer spending and mounting debt.

Ergo any successful strategy to undercut funding in a place like that means first establishing and maintaining courts that have integrity.

The keystone of successful fights against the Mafia both in the U.S. and Italy was to clear corruption out of the local police and courts to make sure that sentences could be upheld and local officials who helped them would be removed from office by prosecution and replaced with honest officials.

That would be the best thing countries from Afghanistan to Mexico could focus on today and that should be the cornerstone of anything like 'nation-building' that we are doing. Without meaningful judicial reform any other effort can be undone by the bad guys who know how to take advantage of corruption (as they always have.)

Yeah the market is down today. It's also up since Obama took office on January 20 (on that day it closed at 7,949.09 FYI.) Your point is?

Hoosier Daddy:

The Great Recession was caused by out of control deregulation and the weakening of what regulatory mechanisms were in place in the housing, banking and brokerage industries.

As I have noted numerous times, I believe things would be far worse today without the government intervention we've seen in those industries (including the stimulus.) Just look at what happened last year when one bank-- Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. Within literally hours it nearly caused a chain reaction that forced the Government to reverse course and step in to stop Merrill Lynch and AIG from becoming the next dominos to fall; they partially succeeded but we're still experiencing the fallout from it. To see the full effect of just letting things run their course you'd have to go back to 1929-1930.

Afghanistan is a no win situation and it is sad that our wonderful troops must still fight there. Unless we have access to Pakistan and the other side of those mountains, there is no hope of defeating the bad guys. This will be Obama's undoing in 2012.

Sorry Eli, I thought my post was obvious. Today's unemployment report was much worse than expected. It even reversed the trend of declining losses. Hardly an endorsement of dear leader and his stimulus.

Only a moron would think the Great Recession would be over in a few weeks

Only a moron would fail to understand that what what started out as a minor little blip of a downturn became The Great Recession because the little squirrel put getting his agenda into place ahead of a proper stimulus

To see the full effect of just letting things run their course you'd have to go back to 1929-1930.

Yes Eli lets spend more money we don't have. Because we have no fear at all that China will stop buying our treasuries and there is no fear whatsover of Weimar style inflation by printing trillions of dollars.

"Yes Eli lets spend more money we don't have. Because we have no fear at all that China will stop buying our treasuries and there is no fear whatsover of Weimar style inflation by printing trillions of dollars.

Brilliant plan."

Then lets pass Cap 'n Trade and make throwing a light switch on more expensive for every household and tax individual health benefits to feed the black-hole of national health care.

You will of course note my specific reference to unemployment rates. The stimulus was supposed to result in (among other goals which may or may not be met) a specific maxing out of unemployment at somewhere around 8%. Without the stimulus they predicted it would max at around 9%. For those of you who don't keep track of such things, we are now at 9.5%. Sounds like a failure to me. No doubt those receiving the stimulus money (as opposed to we who are paying for it) see it as a huge success. That's completely understandable. Then again, so is bank robbery.

At least everyone has learned not to be down-wind when they burn the stuff.

It would be good if it is an Afghan application of COIN-like strategies. Trying to get people off of opium production in Afghanistan is difficult for a number of reasons including that other crops don't travel as well. Providing security in order for better roads, travel and distribution of *other* crops would help a great deal, I believe.

"One thing never changes though. The Marines run an awesome press machine. The TO&E of a Marine rifle squad is 10 riflemen each with a flag in his ruck, and one combat photographer"

They're also the only service who employs combat artists. Some really amazing stuff here...

The analogy to Peleliu is very close. The enemy has prepared cave positions in rocky high ground overlooking a cross fire killing field. Tha Marines have guts and lots of replacements. This Obama strategy is amazingly misguided.

The choice of strategy is difficult--to some extent large scale (and this is a brigade size operation) are not particularly effective against insurgencies. As was pointed out, with their bases in Pakistan, the military analogy is more like Viet Nam although the terrain is a lot worse.

I still believe the best strategy is small unit special operations, but we do have recognize innocent (and perhaps not so innocent) civilians are going to die along with the bad guys. That isnt a message that people like to hear.

What was the alternative? Should we just pack it in and let the people who planned 9/11 rebuild their logistics and training capability?

The Brits tried to conquer the place with 3000 men. Gutsy. A little too gutsy, in fact.

And things have changed quite a bit since 1979. The Soviets army was never as capable as that of the US, and today's US military is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the one we had 30 years ago.

The way things work now the Taliban can't mass troops, they can't travel, and they can't even survive a day in the open without using the locals as shields. If they try to operate from caves they'll find the caves collapsed or sealed off.

The marines will be fine. The problem in Afghanistan is while the bad guys aren't a big threat to our military, they can succeed in preventing any real progress toward a strong central government. There's a reason people call Hamid Karzai "The Mayor of Kabul".

I'm not really sure what the end game looks like for us. We can certainly build that strong central government if we're willing to put in the time and money, but does the American public have the patience for it?

Sorry--didnt complete my Viet Nam analogy--the Viet Nam analogy fails in Afghanistan for one important reason. The insurgency in Viet Nam was initially supported by the NVA and after Tet taken over by the NVA--the Taliban do not have that kind of backing (although I am not clear about the Paks) and attrition becomes a far more feasible strategy.

Dklesmith...In the Pacific War the better strategy for Peleliu like situatuions was to go around them and leave them to starve, since we controlled the air and sea. Truk was an example of not attacking when not necessary. Only when a new airfield to control the air was needed did we attack these positions, such as Iwo Jima. Are these Afghan tribal areas needed, and if so for what? Inter-service rivalry lead to the Peleliu waste of lives just to get McArthur off someone's back. Are we doing this attack into nowhere just to get somebody off Obama's back? If the marines do seize and hold these mountains can they declare victory and come home as Obama is doing in Iraq where he is undoing our triumph, and needs cover to look like a fighting president willing to go into hell and back to find one or two sick old men funded by Saudi Arabia (who can find always find some more). Holding Iraq is worth 100 times more in this Long War with Muslim Guerrillas. There is no oil in the Afghan Mountain tribal areas either.

Truthfully, I don't think that an area that is classified as a "stronghold" can be ignored as if it were an island. So long as there are poppy fields they will have an ability to refit and rearm. The only way to break this is to show the Afghan non combatant and security forces that we are committed, and to show the Afghan fighter that our intent is to capture or kill him.

I'm not sure if I understand what you are asking. I don't WANT TO KILL per se, but I would rather commit more assets, kill or capture bad guys, and give the populace that is either on the fence or peaceful the reassurance that we have not only the means, but the determination to ensure that the Taliban does not come back. The sooner we do it "right", the sooner we can go home.

As soon as women become more interested in war and international relations than shows about third rate musicians, gay fashion designers and White women with a house full of mixed race kids we might actually see more of this on television.

Brent...The Marines are used to that. The idea that we need to conquer a few cold mountains to slow down heroin sales for oil rich AlQueda is another Big Lie. Repeating it wont breath any reality into it.The Marines deserve better and McCain would never have done this action without a good reason. Obama's operation just wants it to look like he is doing something no matter how many casualties he causes for nothing.

The operation in Helmand is probably to interdict the opium operations.The talib do not fight for nothing. They need to be paid as do their brethrenin Pakistan. The collection plate at the local mosque doesn't buy much war gear.Even Tajiks from the north who made up the ground forces the Special Ops guys used to initially rout the Talib/AQ now go south to Helmand to hire out as gunmen.Screwing with the poppy fields is a good way screw the talib. That's why the Marines are carrying out a brigade size op.Break up the drug-lord/warlord/talib poppy ops.There are too many talib/Aq in this area to do the small unit hearts-and-minds stuff. Anything smaller than a battalion would get snuffed.

Another big military action in Afghanistan? Cue the anti-military types here in sunny San Francisco - get ready for the window-smashing from the anarchists and communists. Wait, let me check the local news. What's this? No smashing? No marching? No effigies burning? I forgot! There's a Democrat in the White House!

I am a Democrat, but ideology aside, I don't see how everyone says that this is Obama squandering lives. Hell, I was in Iraq as an Infantry Platoon Leader in 06, and even though I thought the invasion was unnecessary I thought the Troop Surge was good and necessary at the time. If the operation going on now to secure the population and cut the funding from the Poppy proceeds is futile, then what course of action should we take?

I would say that letting the economy run it's course was not the main reason for the great depression. It was probably a recession, unemployment, and the ridiculous tariffs that the government imposed that caused the actual depression.

I never doubted that Obama would be entirely willing to use our military. The only problem is that he's got them on ROE's that allow taliban to flee into safe-havens which they know won't be attacked because civilians are likely to be present. Our guys won't call in an air strike, nor will they move into the compound to clear it and the taliban *knows* that.

Democrat presidents have never been more reluctant to use military force than any Republican president. But in my life-time at least, they all seem to think they can use the military without using the military.

We defeated Germany, by bombing their civilian population centers. Do you understand that.

We defeated Japan, by fire bombing their population centers, and eventually nuking two of their civilian populated cities.

Actually, it took the physical invasion and occupation of Germany to defeat. The bombing campaign was amazingly ineffective in breaking the will of the German people. And even after dropping two nuclear bombs we were willing to accept less than unconditional surrender from Japan to end the war.

And of course the important point is our treatment of both Japan and Germany after the war. We rebuilt them and turned them into to two of the strongest economies and democracies (as well as most peace-loving) in the world.

If we were led by vengeful fools like AllenS, I'm sure we would have been fighting another Hitler or Tojo twenty or thirty years after the end of WWII.

Dkelsmith...The strategy is fine if the locals have a reason to turn on the AlQueda guerrillas and target them for us instead of targeting us for them. Iraq was one case, and Afghan tribal mountain areas are another case. Iraq has oil wealth to sell to us and live well in peace with their neighbors. The Afghan tribes only have heroin poppys, which we will not even let them sell to anyone. Hmmm? Anyway, the 146th aniversary of Picket's Charge is tomorrow, so we should have the Marines charge a little round top in the middle of nowhere for no reason to celebrate that great southern diplay of foolish courage. Too bad about all those dead Marines.

Dkelsmith...I was trying my best to let you read between the lines and think of it yourself. We need to bypass the Afghan Mountains and keep up the periodic bombing until they get tired of waiting there for some damn fool to give them what they want. Keep our miltary force alive and ready to defend Iraq and Iran from someone else who attempts stealing their oil supplies, named Putin, while we drill like hell for oil and gas everywhere we hold the high ground and the al queda does not hold the high ground. Then cut off their food supply, and tell them to eat their sand while we control the north american food cartel.Corollary is to quit the insane use of our food supply for ethanol. All of that takes a non-corrupt government. So we get us a non-corrupt politician and follow her lead.